This blog will be about becoming a writer.

Tag Archives: self publishing company

It is possible that today, Friday, March 8th, and my highly supportive sister’s birthday, and International Women’s Day, my novel “Thaumaturge” is being printed. As in book form!

It could be a month or so before my copies arrive. They will travel overland, less expensive than air, by UPS. The self-publishing company is in Pennsylvania; my location is in the central interior of British Columbia, Canada. My novel will cross the continent of North America. Even I haven’t done that!

I had hoped to have a small book launch event with a few folk on April 1st, April Fool’s Day, a day I thought that would be so entirely appropriate given my embarrassing, demoralizing, at times risible, and, ultimately worthwhile education about self-editing.

Nota Bene to all aspiring writers: If you can afford it, please hire an experienced editor, or editors, (as in copy, content, continuity, etc.), to help you through the editing mine field.

Next time around, if there is one, I might consider selling a kidney to cover the costs of this important factor in publishing. (Of course I’m kidding! If someone I knew needed a kidney, even one as old as mine (!), he/she would get it in a hearbeat, and after several hours in a surgical suite).

The English language, with it’s punctuation/grammar/spelling rules is a dangerous mine field! And I say this after having been a decent literacy tutor a few decades ago. ;o)

So, for anyone who reads “Thaumaturge”, please know that any SPAG you may find is my fault, not the publishing company’s. My author rep has been as steady as Gibraltar during all this Sturm Und Drang.

I know I will do better, next time. Which leads to “Weapon”. That’s the sequel to “Thaumaturge” which I’ve started. I have a prologue, and eleven chapters, so far. However, if “Thaumaturge” tanks, there really would be no point in coughing up a sequel!

But, you know what? I think I might just continue to put words on paper just for the heck of it. Writing is difficult. It is. It is an art, and requires skill. One simply does not just throw words on a page and think it’s a chef d’oeuvre!

But, for me, it was always about meeting my characters. I know this sounds, um, fanciful, but the characters for “Thaumaturge”, most of them, just walked up and introduced themselves to me. It was such a pleasure to channel their back stories!

I recommend Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers”. In it, he has a chapter about the 10,000 hours it takes anyone to master a discipline, (he talks about the Beatles working away in a seedy club in Germany, learning to play all kinds of music before they ever became famous as “the fab four”), whether it be figure skating, acting, painting, neuro-surgery, playing a musical instrument, gymnastics, golfing, or writing, just to name a few. It takes time and endless practice to acquire a skill and master a discipline. Discipline. Dedication. Desire. The 3D commitment to a craft or skill!

At this point, I think I might be closing in on that 10,000 hours standard. 😉